The Prince of Nigeria Grew Up: How to Spot and Protect Yourself from AI and Phishing Scams

Jamie K. Wilson : Feb 4, 2026
PJ Media

...If a request involves money, urgency, or secrecy, step outside the original communication path before acting. Call a known number. Message them through a different platform. Ask a third person ... real people exist in more than one place. Scammers don't. They depend on speed, confusion, and that single point of contact. Never purchase gift cards, wire money, or send digital payments without independent verification. Never use personal funds for company business. Never treat urgency as a reason to skip normal processes...

[PJMedia.com] Once upon a time, it was relatively easy to spot an email scam. They were flawed. Bad grammar, broken formatting, poor spelling and typos, and a sort of odd cadence often referred to as "Engrish" exposed them for what they were: attempts to extract money from "rich" Americans, most commonly by people outside America. Often the scams seemed reasonable, except when they weren't, as with the famous Prince of Nigeria scam: send  me a couple thousand dollars so I can release my $1.7 million account, and I'll split it with you. And for a little while they worked, until people's reason caught up with their greed. (Image: Pixabay)

They were profitable for scammers, who could send an email to thousands of people in hopes that maybe ten would fall for the scam. And they did. But more scammers got into the business, and as the market grew crowded, the suckers grew scarcer. The scams had to get better in order to turn a profit.

So they did.

A Near Miss

A true story, changing details for anonymity:A friend called me yesterday. She's a long-time cybersecurity expert and very good at what she does. She had been following instructions in emails from her company's CEO and was growing suspicious.

It was a strange day; the branch of her company was shut down due to the winter storm that many of us saw over the weekend, and she was teleworking, which in her case meant hardly working, as much of her job was hands-on and had to be done from the office. She received an email from her CEO, who worked many states away; the CEO needed seven gift cards for surprise bonuses to reward a few people for outstanding work. The email, coming in on her phone, looked legit: branding correct, grammar correct, and emailed out of necessity because the CEO was in and out of meetings that day. The gift cards, explained the CEO, had to be physical; she had experienced issues with e-cards. And she'd put off purchasing these cards herself—a mistake, she admitted—until it was nearly too late. She needed them that day.

So my friend set about locating the cards, driving out to the place where they were sold, and then something in her brain put the brakes on: Does this make sense?

No.

Real executives don't pre-emptively justify their decisions or excuse their procrastination. They have assistants to pass things to. This is when she called me, mostly to have another brain to talk things out. And I pointed out a few more things. Real executives don't expect people to purchase things like this from their personal funds; they find people with corporate credit cards to do it. They don't bypass finance or human resources. They don't operate with email only. And they certainly don't effuse gratitude in their phrasing: "I'd like to thank you profusely for your dedication and hard work. It means a lot, and I know I can trust you with this sensitive task." No, a CEO just tells you to make it so.

My friend politely emailed back to request that her CEO use the Slack channel just to verify this was legitimate.

And she got crickets. It was, indeed, a scam, caught just in time... Subscribe for free to Breaking Christian News here

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